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Gift of | 
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1899-1918. | 
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GAIVERSTT Y OF FLLINGS Linn 


rahietis suai 
wii 8 1919 











SUCCEEDING WITH 
WHAT YOU HAVE 








© American Magazine 


CHARLES M. SCHWAB 





SUCCEEDING WITH | 
WHAT YOU HAVE 


BY | 
CHARLES M. SCHWAB 





NEW YORK | 
THE CENTURY CO. 
1917 


Copyright, 1917, by 
Tue Century Co. 





Copyright, 1916, by 
THE CROWELL PUBLISHING COMPANY 





Published, January, 1917 


Bf KAS 


gu 2 Ji 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER , 
I Tutnxrnc Beyonp Your Jos . 
II How Men Are APPRAISED . 
III Seizive Your Opportunities 
IV Tue Cottece Man i Business 
V Wuar Your EmMpiover Expects 
VI My Twenty TxHovusanp Parrt- 
- NERS ae CaN 
VII Men I Have Workep Wiru 
VIII Woman’s Part 1n Man’s Suc- 


CESS 


PAGE 


3 
13 
22 
29 
38 


42 
51 


59 





SUCCEEDING WITH 
WHAT YOU HAVE 





SUCCEEDING WITH 
WHAT YOU HAVE 


I 


THINKING BEYOND YOUR JOB 


HEN old Captain Bill Jones, 

\ \ perhaps the greatest leader of 
men the steel business has ever known, 
had charge of the Braddock plant for 
Mr. Carnegie, a call came for a spe- 
cially capable young man to handle 
an important piece of engineering at 
Scotia. 

Captain Bill knew men. He picked 
high-grade assistants with marvelous 
surety. 

“Which one of your draftsmen shall 

2 


4 Succeeding With What You Have 


we send up to Scotia?” he asked a super- 
intendent. 

“Why, any of them will fill the bill, 
Captain.” 

“But there must be one more capable 
than the others,’ commented Captain 
Bill; “who is he?” 

“T don’t know,” and the superintend- 
ent shook his head; “they are all bright, 
hustling youngsters.” 

Captain Bill stood in thought as his 
keen eyes ran down the red lines of fur- 
naces. At last he said, “Tell every 
man to stick on the job until seven > 
o'clock. Ill pick out Scotia’s chief for 
you.” 

The order was a surprise. It was the 
slack season, when the draftsmen were 
not pressed to get through their work 
in regular hours. But they all kept on 
cheerfully. 

As seven o'clock drew near Captain 


Thinking Beyond Your Job 5 


Bill noticed that the men kept looking 
up to see how much more time they had 
to put in. All save one! Over in the 
corner a young man was so absorbed 
that he seemed to have forgotten there 
was a clock in the room. When the 
hour finally came the others hustled for 
their coats and hats. This chap was 
still bending over his desk. He was the 
man whom Captain Bill sent up to 
Scotia. One hardly needs to add that 
later he became a most valued engineer, 
a high-salaried man. 

For thirty-six years I have been mov- 
ing among workingmen in what is now 
the biggest branch of American indus- 
try, the steel business. In that time it 
has been my good fortune to watch most 
of the present leaders rise from the 
ranks, ascend step by step to places of 
power. ‘These men, I am convinced, are 
not natural prodigies. They won out 


6 Succeeding With What You Have 


by using normal brains to think beyond 
their manifest daily duty. 

American industry is spilling over 
with men who started life even with the 
leaders, with brains just as big, with 
hands quite as capable. And yet one 
man emerges from the mass, rises sheer 
above his fellows; and the rest remain. 

The men who miss success have two 
general alibis: “I’m not a genius” is 
one; the other, “There are n’t the op- 
portunities to-day there used to be.” 

Neither excuse holds. The first is be- 
side the point; the second is altogether 
wrong. 

The thing that most people call “gen- 
ius’ I do not believe in. That is, I am 
sure that few successful men are so- 
called “natural geniuses.” 

There is not a man in power at our 
Bethlehem steel works to-day who did 
not begin at the bottom and work his 


Thinking Beyond Your Job 7% 


way up, round by round, simply by 
using his head and his hands a little 
more freely and a little more effectively 
than the men beside him. Eugene 
Grace, president of Bethlehem, worked 
in the yard when I first knew him. Mr. 
Snyder was a_ stenographer, Mr. 
Mathews a draftsman. The fifteen 
men in direct charge of the plants were 
selected not because of some startling 
stroke of genius but because, day in and 
day out, they were doing little unusual 
things—thinking beyond their jobs. 
When I took over the Bethlehem 
works I decided to train up its man- 
agers as Mr. Carnegie trained his 
“boys.” So I watched the men who 
were already there, and picked out a 
dozen. This selection took months. 
Then I set out to build an organization 
in which we should be bound together 
in harmony and kindly codperation. I 


8 Succeeding With. What You Have 


encouraged my managers to study iron 
and steel, markets and men. I gave 
them all small salaries, but instituted a 
system whereby each man would share 
directly in the profits for which he 
himself was responsible. Every one of 
those boys “came through.” ‘They are 
wealthy men to-day; all are directors of 
the company, some are directors of the 
corporation. 

Most talk about “‘super-geniuses”’ is 
nonsense. I have found that when 
“stars” drop out, successors are usually 
at hand to fill their places, and the 
successors are merely men who have 
learned by application and self-disci- 


pline to get full production from an 
average, normal brain. 


The inventor, the man with a unique, 
specialized talent, is the only real super- 
genius. But he is so rare that he needs 
no consideration here. 


Thinking Beyond Your Job 9 


I have always felt that the surest way 
to qualify for the job just ahead is to 
work a little harder than any one else 
on the job one is holding down. One 
of the most successful men I have 
known never carried a watch until he be- 
gan to earn ten thousand dollars a year. 
Before that he had managed with a 
nickel alarm clock in his bedroom, which 
he never forgot to wind. Young men 
may enjoy dropping their work at five 
or six o'clock and slipping into a dress 
suit for an evening of pleasure; but the 
habit has certain drawbacks. I hap- 
pen to know several able-bodied gentle- 
men who got it so completely that now 
they are spending all their time, days 
as well as evenings, in dress suits, serv- 
ing food in fashionable retaurants to 
men who did not get the dress-suit habit 
until somewhat later in life. 

Recently we have heard much about 


10. Succeeding With What You Have 


investments. To my mind, the best in- 
vestment a young man starting out in 
business can possibly make is to give all 
his time, all his energies, to work—just 
plain, hard work. After a man’s posi- 
tion is assured, he can indulge in pleas- 
ure if he wishes. He will have lost 
nothing by waiting—and gained much. 
He will have made money enough really 
to afford to-spend some, and he will 
know that he has done his duty by him- 
self and by the world. 

The man who has done his best has 
done everything. The man who has 
done less than his best has done noth- 
ing. 

Nothing is more fatal to success than 
taking one’s job as a matter of course. 
If more persons would get so enthused 
over their day’s work that some one 
would have to remind them to go out to 
lunch there would be more happiness in 


Thinking Beyond Your Job 11 


the world and less indigestion. If you 
must be a glutton, be a glutton for work. 
A trained ear can do tremendous busi- 
ness in the obstruction line. Sometimes 
it listens so intently for the toot of the 
quitting whistle that it quite loses the 
sense of spoken orders. 

I have yet to hear an instance where 
misfortune hit a man because he worked 
overtime. I know lots of instances 
where it hit men who did not. Mis- 
fortune has many cloaks. Much more 
serious than physical injury is the slow, 
relentless blight that brings standstill, 
lack of advancement, final failure. 

The man who fails to give fair service 
during the hours for which he is paid 
is dishonest. The man who is not 
willing to give more than this is fool- 
ish. 

In the modern business world “pull” 
is losing its power. “Soft snaps” have 


12 Succeeding With What You Have 


been sponged off the slate. In most big 
companies a thousand stockholders 
stand guard over the cashier’s window, 
where formerly there were ten. ‘The 
president’s son starts at scratch. 
Achievement is the only test. The fel- 
low who does the most is going to get 
the most pay, provided he shows equal 
intelligence. 

Captains of industry are not hunting 
money. America is heavy with it. 
They are seeking brains—specialized 
brains—and faithful, loyal _ service. 
Brains are needed to carry out the plans 
of those who furnish the capital. 

The man who attracts attention is the 
man who is thinking all the time, and ex- 
pressing himself in little ways. It is 
not the man who tries to dazzle his em- 
ployer by doing the theatrical, the spec- 
tacular. ‘The man who attempts this is 
bound to fail. 


Il 
HOW MEN ARE APPRAISED 


HEN I took charge of the 
Carnegie works at Homestead 
there was a young chap employed there 
as water boy. A little later he be- 
came a clerk. I had a habit of going 
over the works at unusual hours, to see 
how everything was moving. I noticed 
that no matter what time I came around 
I would find the former water boy hard 
at work. I never learned when he 
slept. 

Now, there seemed to be nothing re- 
markable about this fellow except his in- 
dustry. The only way in which he at- 
tracted attention was by working longer 


hours and getting better results than 
13 


14 Succeeding With What You Have 


any one else. It was not long before 
we needed an assistant superintendent. 
The ex-water boy got the job. When 
we established our great armor plate 
department there was not the slightest 
difference of opinion among the part- 
ners as to who should be manager. It 
was the youth with the penchant for 
overtime service. | 

To-day that ex-water boy, Alva C. 
Dinkey, is head of a great steel com- 
pany, and very wealthy. His rise was 
predicated on his willingness to work 
as long as there was any work to be 
done. 

If a young man entering industry 
were to ask me for advice, I would say: 
Don’t be afraid of imperiling your 
health by giving a few extra hours to 
the company that pays your salary! 
Don’t be reluctant about putting on 
overalls! Bare hands grip success bet- 


How Men Are Appraised 15 


ter than kid gloves. Be thorough in 
all things, no matter how small or dis- 
tasteful! The man who counts his 
hours and kicks about his salary is a 
_ self-elected failure. 

It may be in seemingly unimportant - 
things that a man expresses his passion 
for perfection, yet they will count heav- 
ily in the long run. When you go into 
your customary barber shop, you will 
wait for the man who gives you a little 
better shave, a little trimmer hair-cut. 
Business leaders are looking for the 
same things in their offices that you look 
for in the barber shop. 

The real test of business greatness is 
in giving opportunity to others. Many 
business men fail in this because 
they are thinking only of personal 
glory. 

Several years ago I was in conference 
with a New York banker when a news- 


16 Succeeding With What You Have 


boy entered the room to deliver a paper. 
After the boy had left the banker said 
to me: 

“For two years that boy has been 
bringing me papers every week day. 
He comes exactly at the time I told 
him to come, three o'clock. He sells 
me a paper for just one cent, and 
neither asks nor expects more. Now a 
boy who will attend to his business in 
that fashion has got the right kind of 
stuff in him. He doesn’t know it yet, 
but I’m going to put him in my bank, 
and you may be sure he will be heard 
from.” 

Andrew Carnegie first attracted at- 
tention by using his head to think with. 
It was when he was a telegraph opera- 
tor on the Pennsylvania Railroad under 
Colonel Thomas A. Scott. One morn- 
ing a series of wrecks tangled up the 
line. Colonel Scott was absent and 


How Men Are Apprased 17 


young Carnegie could not locate him. 
Things looked bad. | 

Right then Carnegie disregarded one 
of the road’s strictest rules and sent out 
a dozen telegrams signed with Colonel 
Scott’s name, giving orders that would 
clear the blockade. 

“Young man,” said the superintend- 
ent a few hours later, “do you realize 
that you have broken this company’s 
rules?” 

“Well, Mr. Scott, are n’t your tracks 
clear and your trains running?” asked 
the young telegrapher. 

Colonel Scott’s punishment was to 
make Carnegie his private secretary. 
A. few years later, when the colonel re- 
tired from office, he was succeeded by 
the former telegrapher, then only 
twenty-eight years old. 

There is a young man in Bethlehem 
whom I expect to move up. This is 


18 Succeeding With What You Have 


the reason: Last winter there was an 
agitation at Washington which, if suc- 
cessful, would have smashed American 
shipping and wounded American busi- 
ness. We wanted to lay the matter 
before the President in its real signifi- 
cance. While we were pondering over 
ways to accomplish this we got a mes- 
sage from the young man [I have men- 
tioned, saying he had seen the President, 
that the President understood the situa- 
tion and had come to agree with us. 

I wired for this young man to come 
on to Bethlehem. I wanted to see him. 
He had initiative; he had been thinking; 
he had arranged an interview with the 
President unprompted. In short, he 
was just the type of man that gladdens 
the heart of every employer. 

Not long ago a man was promoted in 
our works. “How did you happen to 
advance this fellow?” I asked his boss. 


How Men Are Appraised 19 


“Well,” he explained, “I noticed that 
when the day shift went off duty and 
the night shift came on, this man stayed 
on the job until he had talked over the 
day’s problems with his successor. 
That ’s why!” 

I used to have a school friend in Phil- 
adelphia who had always impressed me 
as a forward-looking chap. So I was 
mightily surprised when he went into 
the manufacture of smoking pipes, his 
father’s business. It seemed to me like 
a blind-alley choice. 

To my surprise, this fellow made an 
astonishing success. When I met him, 
several years later, I asked how he had 
done it. 

“Well,” he said, “I found that ever so 
many people were making smoking 
pipes, all doing it in about the same 
way. If I wanted to make any dent I 
had to do something different. I pon- 


20 Succeeding With What You Have 


dered ways and means. Finally, I de- 
cided that instead of having the stem 
run into the bottom of the bow], I would 
raise it to the top, making it more sani- 
tary, as well as novel. ‘The idea caught 
on at once; it has made me hundreds of 
thousands of dollars. All I did was 
climb out of the rut into which other 
manufacturers had slumped.” 

A. man will succeed in anything about 
which he has real enthusiasm, in which 
he is genuinely interested, provided that 
he will take more thought about his job 
than the men working with him. ‘The 
fellow who sits still and does what he is 
told will never be told to do big things. 

Jimmie Ward, one of our vice-presi- 
dents, used to be a stenographer. But 
he kept doing things out of his regular 
line of duty. He reminded me of ap- 
pointments, and suggested little things 


How Men Are Appraised 21 


that helped me get through my work. 
He was thinking beyond his job, so I 
gave him a better one. And he has 
gone up and up. 


III 
SEIZING YOUR OPPORTUNITIES 


UGENE GRACH is a striking 
example of what may be accom- 
plished by the man with his eyes fixed 
further than his pay envelope. Grace’s 
ability to outthink his job, coupled with 
his sterling integrity, lifted him to the 
presidency of our corporation. Hight 
years ago he was switching engines in 
the yards at Bethlehem. Last year he 
earned more than a million dollars, and 
I predict that before long he will be 


perhaps the biggest man in industrial 
America. 


Even in the humble job of switching 
engines Grace made himself felt—there 


is no job too commonplace to express 
22 


Seizing Your Opportunities 23 
the individuality of an uncommon man. 
So he was put to operating an electric 
crane. Then he passed to the open 
hearth department, at fifteen dollars a 
week. I watched the fellow: I saw that 
he was seething with the stuff of which 
big men are built. He was not strong 
physically, but that body housed a dy- 
namo of enthusiasm. 

He was made yard foreman, then 
yard superintendent. When we wanted 
to reorganize the Juragua iron mines in 
Cuba, Grace got the job. His success 
was so solid that on his return he was 
made assistant superintendent to the 
general manager who had charge of 
building the twenty-million-dollar Sau- 
con plant at South Bethlehem. Soon 
he became general superintendent and, 
only a year later, general manager. 

It is a pleasure to do business with 
Grace. His splendid enthusiasm goes 


24 Succeeding With What You Have 


hand in hand with absolute integrity. 
If he makes a statement you can bet a 
million on it. You know he is right. 
This integrity has gone far toward win- 
ning him the position he holds to-day. 

Integrity, incidentally, is one of the 
mightiest factors in salesmanship. If | 
you have a reputation for stating facts 
exactly, for never attempting to gain 
momentary advantage through exag- 
geration, you possess the basis of all suc- 
cessful salesmanship. 

Next to integrity comes personality— 
that indefinable charm that gives to men 
what perfume gives to flowers. Many 
of us think of salesmen as people travel- 
ing around with sample kits. Instead, 
we are all salesmen, every day of our 
lives. We are selling our ideas, our 
plans, our energies, our enthusiasm, to 
those with whom we come in contact. 
Thus, the man of genial presence is 


Seizing Your Opportunities 25 


bound to accomplish much more, under 
similar conditions, than the man with- 
out it. If you have personality, cherish 
it; if you have not, cultivate it. For 
personality can be cultivated, although 
the task is not easy. 

Nothing is so plentiful in America 
as opportunity. ‘There are more jobs 
for forceful men than there are forceful 
men to fill them. Whenever the ques- 
tion comes up of buying new works we 
never consider whether we can make the 
works pay. ‘That is a foregone conclu- 
sion if we can get the right man to man- 
age them. 

All successful employers of labor are 
stalking men who will do the unusual, 
men who think, men who attract atten- 
tion by performing more than is ex- 
pected of them. ‘These men have no 
difficulty in making their worth felt. 
They stand out above their fellows un- 


26 Succeeding With What You Have 


til their superiors cannot fail to see 
them. 

When A. D. Mixsell, one of our vice- 
presidents, died a few months ago, 
every one knew instinctively that his 
place would be taken by a man named 
Lewis, an assistant in the auditing de- 
partment, making, perhaps, two hun- 
dred dollars a month. Both Mr. Grace 
and I picked him out before either had 
consulted the other. He simply stood 
out head and shoulders above every one 
else. 

It is a grave mistake to think that all 
the great American fortunes have been 
made; that all the country’s resources 
have been developed. Men make op- 
portunity. Every great industrial 
achievement has been the result of in- 
dividual effort—the practical develop- 
ment of a dream in the mind of an in- 
dividual. 


Seizing Your Opportunities 27 

I know a young New York fellow 
who has built himself a big business. 
He used to be a poorly paid clerk in a 
department store. 

One rainy day, when customers were 
few, the clerks had gathered in a bunch 
to discuss baseball. A woman came 
into the store wet and disheveled. The 
baseball fans did not disband; but this 
young fellow stepped out of the circle 
and walked over tothe woman. “What 
can I show you, madam?” he asked, 
smiling. She told him. He got the 
article promptly, laid it out before her, 
and explained its merits courteously and 
intelligently. In short, he treated the 
woman just as his employer would have 
treated her under similar circumstances. 
When the woman left she asked for his 
card. 

Later the firm received a letter from a 
woman ordering complete furnishings 


28 Succeeding With What You Have 


for a great estate in Scotland. “I want 


one of your men, Mr. » she wrote, 





“to supervise the furnishing, person- 
ally.”” The name she mentioned was 
that of the clerk who had been courteous 
that rainy day. 

“But, madam,” said the head of the 
firm, a few days later, “this man is our 
youngest and most inexperienced clerk. 
Now, had n’t we better send Mr. ad 

“I want this young man, and no 
other,” broke in the woman. 


3 





Large orders impose their own condi- 
tions. So our courteous young clerk 
was sent across the Atlantic to direct the 
furnishing of a great Scotch palace. 

His customer that rainy day had been 
Mrs. Andrew Carnegie. 

‘The estate was Skibo Castle. 


IV 


THE COLLEGE MAN IN BUSINESS 


HE relation of higher education to 
T industry always has interested 
me. Several years ago I spoke to a 
little group of New York boys from the 
East Side on the subject of business suc- 
cess. ‘These youngsters were spending 
their evenings in hard study after work- 
ing all day for a living, a splendid in- 
dication that they had the right stuff in 
them. 

I told these boys that if they kept to 
their course they stood as good a chance 
of success as any boys in the world, a 
better chance, in fact, than many boys 
entering college at their age instead of 


stepping out into the world of practical 
29 


30 Succeeding With What You Have 


affairs. “The higher education for 
which these boys were giving up three 
or four of their best years,’ I said, 
“holds no advantage of itself in the com- 
ing business battle. It will be valueless 
industrially unless it is accompanied by 
a capacity for plain, hard work, for con- 
centration, for clear thinking. These 
qualities are not learned in textbooks.” 

To my utter surprise, the newspapers 
the next day quoted me as being op- 
posed to a college education, indeed, to 
education in any form. They declared 
that I despised learning and believed the 
time spent in getting it was wasted. 
This false impression has had a long life. 
Even to-day it crops up occasionally. 

IT am not against a college education. 
I have never been. Whatever may 
have been true in the past, there is no 
doubt that to-day industrial conditions 
favor the college man. Old crudities 


The College Man in Business 81 


are disappearing; science is dethroning 
chance. Business is conducted on so 
vast a scale that the broadening effects 
of higher. education, gained through 
proper application, write a large figure. 

But the college man who thinks that 
his greater learning gives him the privi- 
lege of working less hard than the man 
without such an education is going to 
wake up in disaster. I regret that some 
college men enter industry with an in- 
flated notion of their own value. They 
want to capitalize at once their educa- 
tion, and the time they spent getting it. — 
They feel it is unfair to begin at the bot- 
tom, on the same basis with a boy of 
seventeen or eighteen who has never 
been to college. 

A. college man, entering industry, is 
worth no more to his employer than a 
common-school or high-school boy, un- 
less he happens to be taking up some 


82 Succeeding With What You Have 


position in which higher education is di- 
rectly applied. Even then he has to 
adjust himself. Neither knowledge of 
the classics nor mathematical proficiency 
can be converted overnight into a mar- 
ketable commodity. na 

Higher education has its chance later, 
when the college boy has mastered all 
the minor details of the business. 
Then, if he went to college with serious 
purpose, and studied hard and system- 
atically, he has the advantage of a thor- 
oughly trained mind to tackle larger 
problems, a mind which should be 
broader and more flexible because of its 
greater powers of imagination and log- 
ical reasoning. 

Real success is won only by hard, hon- 
est, persistent toil. Unless a young 
man gets accustomed to that in school 
he is going to have a very hard time get- 
ting accustomed to it outside. The 


The College Man in Business 33 


chap who goes to college only because it 
suits his parents to send him, and who 
drifts dreamily through his classes, gets 
a disagreeable jolt when he lands a job 
outside with a salary attached to it. 

Furthermore, if the college man 
thinks that his education gives him a 
higher social status, he is riding for a 
fall. Some college men, too,—not the 
average ones, fortunately—have a pride 
in their mental attainments that is al- 
most arrogance. Employers find it dif- 
ficult to control, guide and train such 
men. Their spirit of superiority bars 
the path of progress. 

Most college men are free from this 
false pride. But occasionally employ- 
ers come in contact with one who has it, 
and judge all college men by him. In 
business we buy by sample, and some- 
times the wrong sort of sample from an 
institution of higher learning makes an 


34 Succeeding With What You Have 


employer feel as Robert Hall felt when 
he wrote of Kippis that “He might be 
a very clever man by nature, for aught 
I know, but he laid so many books on 
top of his head that his brains could not 
move.” 

While I have no sympathy with this 
occasional prejudice against college 
men, yet I have found frequently that 
the very fact of having been denied a 
higher education works in favor of the 
common-school boy. He has to labor 
after hours for his education; nights and 
holidays he has hammered at the forge 
of ambition. Success is built on such 
habits. College men are likely to think 
their evenings are meant for music, so- 
ciety, the theater, rather than for study 
that will add to their business knowl- 
edge. 

For some college men it is a hard de- 
scent from the heights of theory to the 


The College Man in Business 85 


plains of everyday facts and common 
sense. Sometimes years of book learn- 
ing come to grief before a problem that 
is disposed of out of hand by men whose 
wits have been ground to an edge by 
practical everyday experience. 

Thomas A. Edison, who never saw 
the inside of a college as a student, once 
had in his laboratory a man fresh from 
one of our great universities, where he 
had been graduated at the head of his 
class. Soon this young Bachelor of 
Arts met much that upset his pet theo- 
ries. But he would not readjust these 
theories. When things were done con- 
trary to rules laid down in the books, 
he looked on with indulgence. 

One day Mr. Edison unscrewed from 
its socket an incandescent electric light 
bulb. “Find the cubic contents of 
this!” he said to the college graduate. 

To work out the problem by mathe- 


36 Succeeding With What You Have 


matical rote was about as difficult as 
squaring the circle. But the college 
student went at it boldly. Reams of 
paper were figured and disfigured by his 
energetic pencil during the next few 
days. Finally he brought to Mr. Edi- 
son the result of his calculations. 
“You ’re at least ten per cent. out of 
the way,” said the inventor. The grad- 
uate, sublimely confident, disputed this. 

“All right,” said Edison calmly. 
“Let ’s find out.” 

The graduate took out his pencil, 
ready for another siege at mathematics; 
but the inventor quietly picked up a_ 
small hammer and knocked the tip off 
the blown end of the bulb. Then he 
filled the bulb with water, weighed it, 
and in about a minute had arrived ab- 
solutely at the result. It showed that 
the complex mathematical calculations 


The College Man in Business 37 


of the college man were at least ten per 
cent. out of the way. 

Fortunately, the lesson went home, 
and afterward the star student became 
an excellent practical electrician. 


V 


WHAT YOUR EMPLOYER EXPECTS 


ETHLEHEWM’S biggest asset is 
B not its rolling mill plants, its gun 
shops, its armor works, its rail mills; it 
is the men who make up its enthusiastic 
organization. For more than thirty 
years I have been superintending the 
manufacture of steel, and I can say that 
my men at Bethlehem are the most en- 
ergetic, competent and lovable young 
men with whom I have ever worked. 

To no small extent the success of 
Bethlehem has been built up by our 
profit-sharing system. But coupled 
with this individual incentive to extra 
effort is a corps loyalty, a friendly 


rivalry, without which no great busi- 
38 


What Your Employer Expects 39 


ness can reach the maximum of pro- 
duction. 

I love to appeal to the American 
spirit of conquest in my men, the spirit 
of doing things better than any one 
has ever done them before. There is 
nothing to which men respond more 
quickly. 

Once when I was with Mr. Carnegie 
I had a mill manager who was finely 
educated, thoroughly capable and mas- 
ter of every detail of the business. But 
he seemed unable to inspire his men to 
do their best. 

“How is it that a man as able as you,” 
I asked him one day, “cannot make this 
mill turn out what it should?’ 

“I don’t know,” he replied; “I have 
coaxed the men; I have pushed them; I 
have sworn at them. I have done 
everything inmy power. Yet they will 
not produce.” 


40 Succeeding With What You Have 


It was near the end of the day; in a 
few minutes the night force would come 
on duty. I turned to a workman who 
was standing beside one of the red- 
mouthed furnaces and asked him for a 
piece of chalk. 

“How many heats has your shift 
made to-day?” I queried. 

“Six,” he replied. 

I chalked a big “6” on the floor, and 
then passed along without another word. 
When the night shift came in they saw 
the “6,” and asked about it. 

“The big boss was in here to-day,” 
said the day men. “He asked us how 
many heats we had made, and we told 
him six. He chalked it down.” 

The next morning I passed through 
the same mill. I saw that the “6” had 
been rubbed out and a big “?” written 
instead. The night shift had an- 
nounced itself. That night I went 


What Your Employer Expects 41 


back. ‘The “7” had been erased, and a 
“10” swaggered in its place. The day 
force recognized no superiors. Thus a 
fine competition was started, and it went 
on until this mill, formerly the poorest 
producer, was turning out more than 
any other mill in the plant. 

The Bethlehem profit-sharing system 
is based on my belief that every man 
should get exactly what he makes him- 
self worth. This is the only plan I 
know of which is equally fair to the em- 
ployers and every class of employee. 
Someday, I hope, all labor troubles will 
be solved by such a system. 


VI 
MY TWENTY THOUSAND PARTNERS 


AM not a believer in large salaries. 
I hold that every man should be 
paid for personal production. Our big 
men at Bethlehem seldom get salaries of 
over one hundred dollars a week; but 
all of them receive bonuses—computed 
entirely on the efficiencies and the 
economies registered in their depart- 
ments. 

Approximately eighty per cent. of 
the twenty-two thousand men in our 
plants at Bethlehem come under the op- 
eration of the system. The only ones 
not included are certain kinds of day 
laborers, whose work is of such a nature 


that it does not fall readily into the 
42 


My Twenty Thousand Partners 43 


scheme, and the men in a few special or 
too-complex departments. 

Take the case of a mechanic: he is 
given a certain piece of work, and he 
knows that the allotted time for doing 
this work is, say, twenty hours. Per- 
haps he has a regular wage of forty 
cents an hour, irrespective of his pro- 
duction. If he finishes the job in the 
allotted twenty hours, he gets a bonus 
of twenty per cent., bringing his total 
pay for the work up to nine dollars and 
_ sixty cents. But if he does the work in 
twelve hours, he still receives the nine 
dollars and sixty cents, and is ready 
forthwith to tackle another piece of 
work. In other words, the man gets 
bonus pay for the job on the basis of 
the entire schedule time, regardless of 
the actual time it takes him to do it. 

Any short cuts a man may devise or 
any unusual energy he may show are 


44 Succeeding With What You Have 


thus capitalized into profit for him. 
With this stimulus, our men are always 
giving their best efforts to their work, 
and the result has been that the produc- 
tion per man in some departments has 
more than doubled since the plan was 
put into effect. 

We have complete schedules of time 
and bonus rates for many kinds of com- 
mon labor, and our statistics show that 
such labor has been averaging nearly 
forty per cent. above the regular rate 
per hour. Such jobs as wheeling a 
wheelbarrow or handling a shovel have 
been put under the profit-sharing sys- 
tem. 

There are some departments in which 
the work is of such a nature that time 
enters very slightly into calculation—in 
open hearth work or treating of armor 
plate, for example. Here we are more — 
concerned with the quality of the work 


My Twenty Thousand Partners 45 


than with the quantity turned out in a 
given time. In these cases we give a 
bonus for quality, basmg our computa- 
tions on tests of the steel. If we had 
the regular system in operation here, 
workmen might be tempted to hurry 
their work, and a lot of steel would have 
to be thrown out. 

In still other departments we give 
bonuses for efficiencies. If a man han- 
dles his machines so that the item of re- 
pair is very low, or if he gets equal re- 
sults with less than the regular amount 
of fuel, he is paid accordingly. We try 
‘to take into calculation every element 
that depends on the initiative, or origi- 
nality, or energy, or manual dexterity 
of a worker. 

In many departments we use $1 as a 
unit cost standard. The manager or 
superintendent gets 1 per cent. of the 
reduction down to $.95, 2 per cent. of 


46 Succeeding With What You Have 


the total from $.95 to $.90, 3 per cent. of 
the total from $.90 to $.85, and so on. 
This holds out every inducement for 
economy and efficiency. 

We say to the superintendent of blast 
furnaces, for example: “This is your 
normal operation cost, the amount we 
charge up. Everything you save from 
this standard cost you will share, and 
the more money you make the more 
money we will make, and the better sat- 
isfied everybody will be.” 

If Mr. Grace, the president of Beth- 
lehem, who made a million dollars last 
year, were working on a salary, he 
would have been very well paid if he 
had got thirty or forty thousand dollars. 
But I am delighted to see him make a 
million. If he had made two millions 
the corporation would have made that 
much more. | 

We have to have a very elaborate and 


My Twenty Thousand Partners 47 


very costly statistical department to 
carry out the system, but it pays for 
itself a hundred times over. 

There is at Bethlehem a minimum 
wage below which no man’s salary shall 
fall. But most of what each worker 
earns is made up of bonuses. We find 
that if a man has not ambition enough 
to earn bonuses he is not likely to re- 
main with us long. ) 

I am very happy to know that my 
Bethlehem employees are the best paid 
body of men in the steel industry in 
America. Last year, from superin- 
tendents to boys, they averaged $990 
apiece. | 

Systems of general profit sharing. 
have certain disadvantages from which 
ours is free. One disadvantage is that 
the lazy man shares the reward of the 
smart man’s work. General systems 
give employees uniformly bigger wages 


48 Succeeding With What You Have 


in times of general prosperity and fur- 
nish a good excuse to reduce wages at 
other times. 

My system, I believe, can be fitted to 
any branch of industry. A banker once 
told me that there was no way in which 
it could be worked out for banks. I 
told him I thought there was a way. 
And to prove it I devised a system which 
has been put into successful operation 
in a dozen banks. 

Profit sharing works well almost any- 
where. Iuseitinmyownhome. Not 
long ago the expenses of running my 
New York house got exorbitant. I 
called in the steward and said to him: 

“George, I want to strike a bargain 
with you. I will give you ten per cent. 
of the first thousand dollars you save in 
house expenses, twenty-five per cent. of 
the second thousand, and one-half of 
the third thousand.” 


My Twenty Thousand Partners 49 


The expense of operating the house 
was cut in two. 

Men are pretty keen judges of their 
employers. You cannot make work- 
men think you are interested in them 
-unless you really are. ‘They realize at 
once whether your interest is real or 
assumed. 

The man who gets the loyalty of his 
~ employees is the man who has, first of 
all, a reputation for fair dealing. Men 
gage fair dealing quickly and respond 
to it. 

There has never been so much senti- 
ment in business, so close a spirit of co- 
operation between employers and men, 
as there is to-day. It is time for Amer- 
icans to realize the falseness of the cry 
that we are a nation of money-grabbers. 
The difference between us and other na- 
tions is that we know how to earn 
money, while they, in the main, know 


50 Succeeding With What You Have 


how to save it. The sordid, hoarding 
miser, who makes every sacrifice to ac- 
cumulate, is so scarce with us as to cut 
no figure, while abroad he is every- 
where. 


Vil 
MEN I HAVE WORKED WITH 


HENEVER problems of man- 

aging men come to my mind I 

think of my old master, Captain W. R. 

Jones, the man who, Henry Bessemer 

said, knew more about steel than any 
other man in America. 

Old Captain Bill started in at Johns- 
town as a monkey-wrench mechanic 
back in 1874 or 1875, and then went 
with Mr. Carnegie to Braddock—Mr. 
Carnegie’s first steel venture. He was 
manager of the Braddock works when I 
entered the steel business under him in 
1880, and I have never felt a deeper 
and more lasting affection for any man 
than I had for old Captain Bull. 


Uneducated, unpolished, outspoken, 
51 


52 Succeeding With What You Have 


old Captain Bill was one of the most 
magnificent leaders of men America 
has ever produced. Everybody who 
worked for him idolized him, and this 
idolatry made it possible for him to 
break all previous records in steel pro- 
duction. 

Captain Bill could never understand 
the chemistry of the steel business, 
which was just then beginning to re- 
form the old hit or miss program. I 
remember very well the first time the 
Pennsylvania Railroad specified that the 
rails we furnished should be of a cer- 
tain chemical composition. ‘This alarmed 
the old captain. He had never heard 
such names as carbon and manganese. 

“Charlie,” he said to me one day, 
“this damn chemistry is going to ruin 
the steel business yet.” 

In those days, of course, the steel 
business was in its infancy. Our ex- 


Men I Have Worked With 538 


pansion since then has passed belief. 
In 1880 the whole country produced less 
than a million tons of steel. In 1890 
the amount had risen to five million 
tons; in 1900 about thirteen millions; in 
1910 over twenty millions; and this year 
we shall produce over forty million tons 
of steel in America. 

Once I wrote to Mr. Carnegie about 
a rail mill which we had designed at 
Braddock, and announced enthusias- 
tically that when the mill was completed 
it would roll over a thousand tons of 
rails a day. 

“T see no objection to the amount of 
money you want to spend,” Mr. Car- 
negie wrote back, “but I want to exact 
one promise from you, that you will 
never tell any one we were foolish 
enough to suppose that this country 
would ever require a mill to make one 
thousand tons of rails a day.” 


54 Succeeding With What You Have 


Now, think of us, after this short 
time, making from twelve thousand to 
fifteen thousand tons of steel rails a 
day! | 

In 1886 it fell to my lot to roll the 
first steel girder that ever went into a 
skyscraper. At that time the business 
promised little. But to-day more than 
five million tons of steel are used an- 
nually for buildings. In 1901 I built 
the first steel railway car; now more 
than five million tons of steel a year are 
used for that purpose. | | 

Old Captain Bill Jones was a man 
of many original notions. For in- 
stance, he would never take the partner- 
ship that Mr. Carnegie offered him re- 
peatedly. He said he didn’t want the 
men to think he was sharing the profits 
of the company. After trying in vain 
to change his manager’s mind, Mr. Car- 
negie declared that he would always pay 


Men I Have Worked With 55 


Captain Bill as much as the President 
of the United States was getting. And 
he always did. 

The captain, I remember, used to 
characterize Mr. Carnegie as a wasp 
that came buzzing around to stir up 
everybody. One hot day in early sum- 
mer, Mr. Carnegie sought out Jones in 
the works. 

“Captain,” he said, “I’m awfully 
sorry to leave you in the midst of hot 
metals here, but I must go to Europe. 
I can’t stand the sultry summer in this 
country. You have no idea, Captain, 
when I get on the ship and get out of 
sight of land, what a relief it is to me.” 

“No, Andy,” flashed the captain, 
“and you have no idea what a relief it 
is to me, either.” 

On one occasion I was talking with 
Herbert Spencer, Mr. Gladstone, and 
Mr. Carnegie in England. Each of us 


56 Succeeding With What You Have 


was supposed to contribute something 
entertaining to the conversation, and 
for a while I was rather puzzled to 
know what to say that would interest 
these famous men. Finally, I decided 
I would tell them some stories about the 
old captain, and I told them many. 
One of the things I prize most is a let- 
ter from Mr. Spencer recalling those 
stories. | 

While my mind is running back over 
those first days of the steel business, I 
think of William Borntrager, who did 
much for rolling mill development. 
While on a vacation William fell in 
love with a handsome, rather stout Ger- 
man girl. When he came back he told 
Mr. Carnegie that he wanted another 
vacation, so that he could get married. 

Mr. Carnegie was delighted. ‘Tell 
me about the fortunate lady,” he asked, 
“is she tall and slender and willowy?” 


Men I Have Worked With 57 


“Well, no, Mr. Carnegie,” replied 
Borntrager. “Indeed, if I had had the 
rolling of her, I think I would have 
given her a few more passes.” 

Mr. Carnegie was the first big Amer- 
ican business man to inaugurate a real 
profit-sharing system. He was the 
epitomization of unselfishness. Per- 
haps the way in which Mr. Carnegie 
differed from many employers could be 
illustrated by calling up the picture of 
two boys about to feast. One says: 
“T have a nice pie. Come and watch 
me eat it.” The other says: “I have 
a nice pie. Come, let’s eat it.” 

Mr. Carnegie’s personality would en- 
thuse anybody who worked for him. 
He had the broad views of a really big 
man. He was not bothered with the 
finicky little things that trouble so many 
people. When he made me manager, 
Mr. Carnegie said: 


58 Succeeding With What You Have 


“Now, boy, you will see a good many 
things which you mustn't notice. 
Don’t blame your men for trivial faults. 
If you do you will dishearten them.” 

When I want to find fault with my 
men I say nothing when I go through 
their departments. If I were satisfied 
I would praise them. My silence hurts 
them more than anything else in the 
world, and it doesn’t give offense. It 
makes them think and work harder. 

Many men fail because they do not 
see the importance of being kind and 
courteous to the men under them. 
Kindness to everybody always pays for 
itself. And, besides, it is a pleasure 
to be kind. I have seen men lose im- 
portant positions, or their reputations— 
which are more important than any 
position—by little careless discourtesies 
to men whom they did not think it was 
worth while to be kind to. 


Vill 


WOMAN’S PART IN MAN’S SUCCESS 


A haan are a good many things 


to be considered in selecting 
men for important positions. One of 
the things that I always take into ac- 
count is their family relations. If a 
man’s wife takes the part of a discreet 
helper, or co-director with him, he is 
that much the more valuable to us. 

It is a common enough saying that it 
is harder to save money than to earn 
it. The women of the United States 
have more to learn about their hus- 
bands’ money than the men have to 
learn about getting it. That is, men 
are getting more out of their earning 


capacities than their wives are getting 
59 


60 Succeeding With What You Have 


out of managing the money which their 
husbands provide them. 
I can never express the wonderful 


___ help Mrs. Schwab has been to me from 


the.very start. Not long ago a group 
of men offered me a large sum, sixty 
million dollars, I believe, for half of 
Bethlehem. I told my wife about it 
that evening. 

“This is a big sum,” I said. “Half 
of what I have is yours. What shall 
we do? If we sell, your share, invested 
at five per cent., will bring you an in- 
come of over a hundred thousand dol- 
lars a month for the rest of your life.” 

“We wouldn't sell for five times 
that,” my wife said. “What would I 
do with the money? And what would 
you do without your work?” 

I have seen more men fail in busi- 
ness through the attitude taken by their 
wives in their younger days than from 


Woman’s Part in Man’s Success 61 


all the vices put together. A nagging 
wife, or one who is not in sympathy with 
a man’s work, who expects impossible 
things of him, and is incapable of tak- 
ing a general intelligent interest in his 
work, is one of the worst handicaps he 
could have. If a man works with his 
mind clogged by domestic troubles he 
is of no use to himself, his employer, 
or the world at large. 

I don’t suppose that a wife, ordi- 
narily, should try to tell a man how to 
conduct his business; but she should be 
interested in it, and it will pay him to 
keep her educated about it. 

I believe in people marrying young, 
for a happy married life is one of the 
best inspirations a man can have. 

The question of recreation is being 
considered more in modern business 
than ever before. All men need pe- 
riods of relaxation, changes of environ- 


62 Succeeding With What You Have 


ment, mental rest. I never care how 
long a vacation any of my managers 
takes, provided that he has his end of 
the business up to the general level at 
the time he leaves, and so energized and 
systematized that it will stay there 
while he is away. 

Travel broadens a man, if he keeps 
his eyes open. And he is sure to see 
many things which will help him in busi- 
ness. In Europe, several years ago, I 
went through some steel plants in Aus- 
tria. Later I was talking with Em- 
peror Francis Joseph. 

“What can you find in our small and 
comparatively unproductive establish- 
ments to interest you?” asked the em- 
‘peror, “when you have such large, 
splendid steel plants in America?” 

“At least, Your Majesty,” I replied, 
“TI can see what to avoid.” | 

Some of those nations across the At- 


Woman's Part in Man’s Success 638 


lantic have very definite divisions of 
aristocracy. Men in whose veins flows 
titled blood are vested with the right to 
sit in high places. I have always be- 
lieved that the aristocracy of any coun- 
try should be the men who have suc- 
ceeded—the men who have aided in 
upbuilding their country—the men 
who have contributed to the efficiency 
and happiness of their fellow men. If 
America is to have an aristocracy, let it 
be so builded. And our future will be 
safe. 


THE END 








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